


One

by sleazy_c



Series: Lokir of Rorikstead [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Drama, Racism, Vignette, Violence, so far as i can tell, speciesism?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21979492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleazy_c/pseuds/sleazy_c
Summary: The Khajiit, facing her execution.
Series: Lokir of Rorikstead [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582192
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	One

“She’s not on the list.”

No, she was not on the list. The Nords from the wagon ride to Helgen had not been captured alongside the Khajiit. No one had been captured alongside her. The Imperial ambush she had stumbled into had incapacitated her quickly and efficiently, trudging along the mountain range by herself. 

That isolation had been one of the deciding factors in her choice to try and cross the border. In Skyrim, finding a Khajiit with no caravan was nearly as unlikely as finding an ice wraith back in Elsweyr, and caused nearly as much distress to the locals. She was tired of the Skyrim cold; she felt it nipping at her ankles through the thin cloth boots they had dressed her in after capturing her. She was tired of the Skyrim men: Nords either threatening to make a rug out of her or pinching her tail and asking her, _“purr for us.”_ Most of all, though, she was tired of Skyrim’s uncanny ability to remind her of her own loneliness. Of all the Tamriel lands she had traveled, this one enforced the most introspection upon her. When she had failed to find any distractions between the snow-capped mountains and the cobwebbed caves she had figured it was time to move on: find something to occupy her time until the need to run came again, and again. _"Vaba maaszi lhajiito,"_ as her cousins used to say.

Seeing as she was facing her execution, though, she needn’t worry about that anymore. “End of the line,” that Nord from the wagon had said.

When the Imperial with the list (always with the lists, Imperials) had asked the Khajiit who she was, she’d remained silent. Her identity didn’t matter anymore, and she’d never really had one to begin with. She’d been more ghost than Khajiit for most all of her life, and now she was to lose what little semblance of a life she did have.

The thief from Rorikstead ran, crying, from the chopping block, only to be shot down in an instant by the archers. The Khajiit felt her whiskers twitch in disgust at the shameful display. Better a prideful death, like that Stormcloak whose head now lie motionless in a basket, than weeping like a milk-drinker.

Her head pounded from the blow to the head she had received upon capture, compounded with unshed tears. Tears not for the life she was to lose, but for the life that she had never truly had to begin with. No home, no loved ones, no last words. The only people who knew of her were her executioners, the two rebels from the wagon ride, and the dead coward-thief.

Hearing herself be called forward, the Khajiit approached the block: a few steps which stretched for hours in her head. She looked to the crumpled body of the Thief, and realized that they were both to be dead, less than two-hundred steps from each other. The Khajiit, whose pride at thinking she could slip past the border unseen was what led her to that moment, being shoved to her knees by an Imperial. The Thief, who ran, free from the cloud of self-consciousness, who had wanted nothing more than to just continue living: a feeling the Khajiit did not know. What did her hateful pride bring her that his cowardice did not bring him?

The Khajiit placed her head upon the block, the dead Stormcloak’s blood soaking into her fur, the wind howling in a way she never heard before. The executioner raised his axe, and she closed her eyes. “Forgive me, Lokir of Rorikstead,” she whispered, and awaited release.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first actual series. I'm coming up with it as I go along, and there ain't much of an overarching plot. Forgive my meandering.
> 
> "it is necessary to run away."


End file.
